I was stuck by how sad this scenario is, where the family of a deceased firefighter is attacking the widow of their son, claiming the son had no idea he married a woman who was originally a biological man. THe widow is obviously in torment over these accusations. They are seeking to block her from access to her husband’s death benefits.
Should state marriage licenses have a requirement than any party to the marriage who has undergone gender re-assignment must disclose it? As the science and procedures of gender re-assignment gets more and more sophisticated this problem might crop up more and more often. Having this requirement would make sure that people will not be attacked after the fact like this.
Someone who has had sex reassignment surgery cannot have children. Certainly there are women and men who are sterile, but I think most people would agree that no one can be faulted for not knowing that they were sterile going into a marriage. If they do know so ahead of time, it’s reasonable to expect them to be honest about it up-front. Marriage coupled with having and raising children is a fairly well accepted and expected thing by most people. Not being able to have children may well be a show-stopper for many.
It’s highly likely that eventually the partner will find out. At that point, physical violence is a distinct possibility. Marriage is based on trust. Discovering that the person you have been married to for years has been hiding a not-insubstantial revelation from you for all that time is certainly liable to cause problems, even before getting to issues of homophobia or whatever kicking in.
Again, marriage is based on trust. There may be places where lying or holding back the truth is perfectly reasonable, but this isn’t really one of them.
Of course, items 1 and 3 are really outside the interests of the state. I would encourage people to be honest just on general principal, but I wouldn’t legislate it. Item #2 is, on the other hand, relevant to state interest. Murders, spouse abuse, etc. are best to be prevented if you can accomplish it. Such extreme outcomes are, likely, going to be a small percentage of all cases of course, but still unnecessary. Seeing as people should already be being honest, I don’t see there as being a downside.
As far as I know, people are not legally obliged to disclose anything else before getting married, so why should they have to disclose this? Should I be forced to disclose the fact that I’m infertile, or that I’ve slept with women before, or that I once slept with the entire football team, or that I was adopted, or that one of my grandparents was black, or any of the other millions of things that could lead to strife if I chose to marry a moron?
If such a law was passed, I can guarantee you it wouldn’t be for the protection of transgendered people.
That family is disgusting. I can’t imagine what that poor woman must be feeling. Horrible human beings.
Bingo. And in fact, if such a law was passed, it would mean that trans* people wouldn’t be getting married in most states in the country, because of nonsensical chromosomal absolutism in the laws that do not reflect psychological or physical realities of 2010.
I’m not as crushed by this as you seem to be. Texas (rightly or wrongly) does not allow homosexual marriage. A transgender person marrying someone from the same sex is, by definition, a homosexual marriage. Ergo, the marriage is void ab initio.
As for the requirement that one not procure a marriage by fraud, yeah, that should be a requirement. And it is. As for ferreting out said fraud by asking for it on a marriage license, I can’t really see the problem with it, and it would save a lot of subsequent heartache for those woefully obtuse to certain… things… about the marriage. (edit: I suspect if and when homosexual marriage is permitted that then would be a good time to start asking about this)
On a related note, I seriously question the relationship if the dead person/alleged fraud victim wasn’t aware of her sexual/gender issues, so I probably suspect that he was fully aware of it and didn’t care. However (again, rightly or wrongly) that’s probably irrelevant in this case.
Although I can see how such a policy could be used against people, it seems like in this case it may have been to the advantage of Nikki Araguz. It would have documented that the late husband knew.
On the other hand, would the requirement mean everyone would need to get tested for their chromosomal gender before marriage? Because that would certainly be a PITA. Only a handful of states require any blood testing before marriage anymore. I don’t know that anyone has ever verified my gender at the chromosomal level. And with any test given to a large population you get some incorrect results. That would create some headaches. Can you imagine the Bridezilla insanity when results got switched in the lab or something?
Biological sex isn’t always as simple as having XY or XX chromsomes. For example a person with complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome would have XY chromosomes, but an entirely female (even hyperfeminine) body type and genitalia. The vagina, breasts, and other secondary sex characteristics would have developed one their own, without medical intervention.
This person would have been raised as a female, indentify as female, look exactly like a female even when naked, but lack ovaries or a uterus (hence being sterile and not menstrating), the vagina may be shallower than normal, and this person would still have testes, but they’d remain in the abdomen. This person may be taller than the average woman. Is this person a man or a women?
No, it should not be required by law. How people handle their own private relationships are no one’s business but theirs.
There’s no fraud, either, regardless whether she told him. She was female when she married him. Since the normal process is to get your name and sex legally changed upon reassignment surgery, she was also legally female when she married him. What she was before their marriage isn’t relevant.
I really hope someone points this out. The validity of her marriage shouldn’t rely on what she may or may not have said behind closed doors.
Of course not, and for the reasons Sage Rat mentions. It’s none of the government’s business. Deceiving your bride or groom is a bad moral policy, but in no way shape or form should it be illegal. As Tanaqui says, who knows what other random bits of information the government might require to be disclosed before two people can get married.
I thought that it was the exact opposite. That if you were born male, and had all the surgery to transition to female, legally you are now female and can have a legal marriage with a male. Does this vary state to state?
I was following this to sort of an extreme, in which you were entitled to know the chromosomal gender of the person you were marrying, or the state were trying to enforce a ban against same-chromosomal-gender marriages, or at least unwitting ones.
Still, there are those cases of infants born with ambiguous genitalia who have surgery to make them more like one gender. They might not know about the surgery.
My understanding is that a lot of people who get this surgery don’t see this so much as changing genders but clarifying their gender. And it’s more of a continuum than a binary thing. Sure, the vast majority of people are at one end or another, but pretty much the whole continuum seems to be populated.
Yes. Not all states recognize gender reassignment. Texas is one of those states. By Texas law, the widow in this case is still a man and the marriage was never valid, regardless of what the husband knew or didn’t know. In the eyes of Texas, it was two dudes who could not have been legally married.
It doesn’t matter how the person who has the surgery sees it, it only matters how the state sees it. Some states only recognize a person as being the gender they are recorded as having been born with and do not legally recognize surgery as changing that person’s sex. Right or wrong, this was not a legal marriage in Texas.
Hey, it’s Texas. Why would anyone expect any different?
except the law of statuses has to operate with binary things.
for the truly oddball cases where the law hasn’t caught up to you yet, sometimes you just gotta deal with the fact that the law doesn’t incorporate that one-in-a-million case and take the cards you’ve been dealt. Like siamese twins - are they two separate people? (I actually don’t know this)